


Bait

by aisle_one



Series: After the Credits [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 07:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6229639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aisle_one/pseuds/aisle_one
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in captivity, Q proves he can do damage on a laptop while lying in shit and piss.</p><p>Prelude to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5473919">it's all right, if you want to come back</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bait

**Author's Note:**

> _"I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field."_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> _

When the fake website for the multi-national terrorist group MI6 has been monitoring for months goes dark and untraceable and wipes out with it all of MI6’s intel, a solid knowledge lands in M’s gut like a punch: they have Q. 

Moments later, a new website appears. The group’s trademark clown face, grotesque and laughing, materializes as a mocking GIF on every computer monitor, tablet, and phone owned by MI6. Simultaneously, the fire alarms ring at headquarters. And a second punch lands, hitting harder: they have Q, and they are in deep, deep shit. 

_

 

The first week they beat him. They use their fists, their booted feet, cables of rope, metal chains, and a policeman’s baton. They locate his weak spots: the bend in his neck, the crook of his elbow, his feet, his toes, his left shoulder that was dislocated when he was a child. His hands and fingers. They start with shallow razor cuts to his palm and graduate to needles pricking his fingertips. He gurgles and curses, but refuses to scream — until they tear away the first fingernail. A second. Third. He screams and screams. They laugh.

They plunge his head in freezing water and hold it beneath the surface until his lungs burn. He passes out. He wakes choking. A hand is around his throat, squeezing. It releases. It’s replaced by a noose made from the tie Bond gifted him for Christmas. The reminder blossoms a desperate hope even as he is hanged from the ceiling fan. It breaks from his weight and the hope spirals down with him as he crashes to the floor. His left shoulder dislocates and he screams. He screams again when they realign it.

They call him names: stupid little cunt bitch piece of shit faggot. They accuse him of stealing and cram his mouth with ripped wires, smashed computer chips, and a broken cell phone. Your fault, they say. No privacy, no freedom. Forced to live like sheep — bah-bah, they mock — slaves of the institution. They just want to be left alone. To exist as they like, to have no religion, to fuck as they please, to smoke pot, shoot heroine, piss on the streets, mark graffiti on bathroom walls or shit on its floor _without being watched all the goddamned fucking time_. 

Faintly, Q thinks: how derivative. 

They rant for hours. But they ask no questions. They don’t want answers. They want domination.

_

 

On the third day of the second week, they unshackle Q’s ankles and wrists and sit him up on the bed that has become his prison. A laptop is propped on his lap. He has been fed only a single slice of stale bread and several bottles of water. His vision swims and he nearly retches. He stinks from the three days of piss and defecation that have collected in his pants because they have refused him access to the bucket he uses as a toilet. (Although later he learns that this fetid state is his best weapon. No one wants to come near him, no one wants to touch him.) It disgusts him, makes him feel less than human, less than an animal, and like a park bench in a dirty part of London littered with trash and stained with filth and feces.

Their request (demand) is expected: access to MI6. “Pretty please,” a man in his twenties says with a smirk and a gun pointed at Q’s head. 

Q obeys. It’s a clumsy hack into a database that houses public information. MI6 — specifically, Q’s people — discover it immediately and Q is expelled. Q’s captors aren’t fooled. 

The man with the gun stops smirking and smacks Q with the butt. “Stop fucking around,” he snarls. But Q refuses to do more and the torture continues. A day passes. Then two, three. Q loses consciousness (again) and stops counting.

_

 

Q wakes and finds Bond sitting next to him. Bond extends a hand. Q flinches. 

“Easy now,” Bond says, and watches Q closely. He waits for Q to settle before laying his hand on Q’s head. It sweeps a greasy lock off Q’s forehead and presses against it. “You’ve got a fever. We need to keep you hydrated.” 

Bond carefully lifts Q’s head and presses a warm mug to his lips. Spicy tea, sweetened to Q’s liking, coats his dry mouth and slides down his aching throat. He coughs. Bond pauses, assesses Q, and pulls the mug away. The sound of dripping water alerts his hearing, then fades. Bond’s hand returns to Q’s hair and cards through it. Q sighs at the sensation and closes his eyes, content to lose himself. Bond is here. It’s safe to drift away. Something wet touches his forehead — a kiss? No. A damp cloth. An inkling of disappointment spikes in Q, but it quickly dissipates to relief. Bond is wiping at his brow, his cheeks, his chapped lips. He is gentle, comfortingly thorough. At last, Q will be clean.

Q’s shut eyes grow heavy and his breathing deepens. 

“That’s right,” Bond says softly, continuing to wipe his face. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be here. I’ll take care of you.”

_

 

Q wakes twitching in agony and finds a blonde woman sitting on the edge of his bed. All pleasant remnants of his dream of Bond are quickly eclipsed by pain. His eyelashes flutter uncontrollably. The blonde woman watches him, unmoved. No hint of a smile to suggest satisfaction. Not even a grimace to indicate revulsion. After all, he still smells. Still lying in his piss and shit. She tells him a story.

_

 

Once upon a time (this is how it started):

MI6 spies on a website that sells used art supplies. The agency suspects it’s a cover, a virtual trading post for the illegal sale of prescription drugs, but hard evidence eludes it. From an advertisement posting to a price drop notification to an actual sale and the credit card number that secures it — none result in a qualified arrest. Until the day a kid in university is hauled out of his anthropology class in handcuffs. 

The government traces a listing for barely used pastel chalks to the kid’s computer, which is confiscated from his apartment seconds after he leaves for class. In the kid’s closet, a box of stimulants is discovered. Tiny vacuumed bags storing tinier pills. There are hundreds of them and for each a count is charged against the kid. Plus racketeering. Plus conspiracy.

The kid is stunned. Shocked. He pleads innocence. He cries. He begs. He refuses to admit guilt. But he is found guilty, and he is sentenced. Twenty-five years in a maximum facility. He doesn’t make it. They find him in the holding cell, before transport, dangling from the prison bars, from a noose made from his grey jumpsuit, dead from self-asphyxiation.

Months later, another kid confesses. He did it. He sells, he traffics, he balances the books. He tells MI6 where the headquarters is located. He gives them names, provides coordinates for a farm in Scotland where a Volkswagen camper is scheduled to stop for a pick up. He tells them he’s useful, he can gather more information — more “intel,” using the language of cops. So they strike a deal, MI6 and their brand spanking new informant, and the kid gets zero prison time. 

Oh, and the other kid? He framed him. Why? He shrugs. The kid got on his nerves. Stupid, fey thing. 

_

 

She is the dead kid’s sister. She claims MI6 murdered him, and she’s been scheming revenge ever since.

She is the mastermind behind this multi-national organization of terrorists, a conglomerate of freaks and geeks, each smart enough to build an atomic bomb, but too stupid to see past her batting eyelashes. Her coy smile. The dimples in her cheeks. They rotate around her like she is the sun, pulled by her charisma, eager to be on the receiving end of her spare warmth. They are loners. Outliers. It is easy to persuade them to her beliefs, to turn their simmering rage against the government. To make soldiers out of them, have them believing they are heroes for a just cause.

At first, their demonstrations are harmless — loud, obnoxious protests, disturbances on an otherwise quiet afternoon, but harmless. They march. They graffiti. They shout and curse and chase away tourists. They are a congestion on the public sidewalk when they insist on handing out flyers, but harmless. Still harmless.

Activities escalate to bomb threats. An actual planting of an explosive in a government building — thank goodness it’s a weekend and the device is feeble. No one is hurt and the damage is minimal. 

They graduate to hacking. Bank accounts owned by wealthy politicians and businessmen are depleted. Copyright, trademark, and patent companies are infiltrated and electronic records that preserve ownership are deleted. They are leveling the playing field. Removing artificial creations of status and power.

They draw supporters. Others join the cause. But their purpose becomes murky, muddled, and they develop extremist views. They become violent and their list of opponents is simplified: any thing that isn’t for them is against them, and MI6 and its house of spies becomes enemy number one.

The Quartermaster in charge of the institution’s machinations becomes the primary target.

_

 

It was late at night — or early in the morning, as the blonde woman tells it — when Q was snatched from an empty street on his way home. His eyes were tight and dry with fatigue, and he stopped walking to remove his glasses and rub at them. Mere seconds. Long enough for a fist to knock the glasses from his hand and land a punch on his jaw. A neat right hook that instantly crumpled him. He was thrown like a sack of potatoes over a shoulder and whisked away.

_

 

“Who knew it would be so easy?” she muses, then laughs. It’s a bright, charming tinkle. Then she forces him to watch a video.

The image is poor and grainy, amateur, like from a basic security camera. Q realizes that’s exactly what has captured the scene. An agent — 005 — is cornered in a stairwell, wounded and bleeding. He is lying on the floor in an awkward angle, as if he had fallen into the position. Three figures in Hazmat suits stand over him. They look up at the camera. The motion is synchronized, choreographed like the next, when they raise their hands. Each holds a canister. They look away from the camera, look down at the agent. Smoke billows from the canisters and they douse the man. His mouth opens and Q is certain that he screams, but there is no sound. The video does not have audio. It is no less horrific, no less defeating in impact as Q watches the agent’s skin burn and sizzle and disintegrate and peel away from his muscle and tissue.

Q tries to pry his eyes away, but the woman catches his face between iron fingers and forces him to watch the agent die. Seven minutes and sixteen seconds of agony. Tears stream down Q’s cheeks. She lets him go.

“So you see,” she says, “You have two choices. Help us disable MI6, or — ” She rises to her feet, unplugs the thumb drive storing the video from the laptop and throws it on the bed. “Destroy it.”

_

 

They stop feeding him. He exists solely on the liquid dripping from an IV forced into his veins. An emptiness gapes in his stomach that has him imagining teeth chewing on his insides, eating himself to survive. It’s a state of deprivation that enlightens. He understands why people break.

His hunger swallows his entire existence. He stops feeling the soiled mess in his pants, stops smelling his stink. His vision goes blurry and it has nothing to do with his eyesight. His mind gets stuck on a loop: _feed me feed me feed me_. Please.

They keep him shackled. They prop the laptop on the bed within his line of sight. Over and over, he watches 005 die — until a new video replaces it, then over and over he watches 002 eaten by flames, lit up from gasoline poured over her.

_

 

Q gives away an MI6 warehouse that is used to store military weapons, safe houses in South America, and a secret military base in Pakistan. 

The organization touts their “victories” on their new website. The press lends fuel to their cause, sending the public into a panicked fit, as if armageddon is imminent. New recruits join in droves.

_

 

What Q’s captors don’t know: as he gives, he takes, and he leaves breadcrumbs for MI6 to follow. 

As Q hacks into MI6 to locate the warehouse, he simultaneously implants his location. He furiously codes to camouflage the open portal he creates between MI6 and the nucleus of network activity occurring where he is imprisoned. He commands a message, anticipating an immediate rush to his rescue: not yet.

When Q steals the information for the safe houses in South America — including the cabin in Argentina where Bond was laid over after a mission in Brazil and forced Q to stay in his earpiece the entire night after claiming to see a ghost — he simultaneously traces the electronic footprints left behind by the organization’s international cartel. On a large screen at MI6, at the hubbub of the surveillance unit, dots spark to life like a string of Christmas lights. A veritable treasure map. Again, Q holds off rescue and commands: not yet.

Pakistan is a score. The organization is jubilant. His captors celebrate by shutting off traffic lights in central London during rush hour — a childish trick Q parts with as a token show of his compliance. Nevertheless, they re-cuff his wrists and ankles to the bedposts. Thankfully, as information leaches from Pakistan to MI6, enabled by a trojan horse that embeds in a recruiter’s phone from an email the blonde woman sends — subject line: green light to appropriate — an automatic command simultaneously delivers to MI6: NOW. DO IT NOW.

_

 

Q wakes and finds Bond sitting next to him. He extends a hand. Q flinches. But not from anticipated pain. 

“You’re just a dream,” Q says, voice breaking. It has been days. MI6 must have chosen to abandon him, punish him for his betrayal. Q had resigned to his fate — or so he thought. Even in his dreams, Bond pesters him. “I’m fine. You can go.”

Bond reaches to close the space to Q and rests his hand lightly on Q’s cheek. Caresses it. “You’re not dreaming, and I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
